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Standard anti-cholera antibiotics like tetracycline and doxycycline 'are the wrong drugs to send over' to the relief camps, said Dr. Paul A. Blake, an expert on the epidemiology of cholera at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a Federal agency in Atlanta. In an interview after he learned about the findings of antibiotic resistance in the cholera strain, Dr. Blake said several relief organizations had been sending the standard antibiotics in the belief that they were the drugs that were needed. The cholera bacterium's resistance to standard antibiotics, though of concern, is less dangerous than it would be in treating many other infections because antibiotics are a secondary measure in treating cholera. The primary life-saving measures are giving fluids and salts by mouth and by intravenous injection to restore the gallons of fluid lost in diarrhea. Dr. [Maria Neira] and Dr. Blake said early laboratory results indicated that the cholera strain is the same one that has been endemic in Rwanda in recent years, the type of Vibrio cholerae known as El Tor, serogroup 01, serotype Ogawa.

'It sounds totally wild and weird,' Dr. Merle Sande said, 'but it is a great example of the frustration and length that people will go to try to get a breakthrough.' Sande is the co-chairman of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, which is considering plans to conduct baboon bone-marrow transplants for AIDS there in collaboration with Dr. Suzanne T. Ildstad of the University of Pittsburgh. Since 1983, [Anthony S. Fauci]'s institute has been experimenting with bone-marrow transplants between identical twins to combat HIV. About 50 healthy twins have donated marrow to their HIV-infected siblings. CHART:Future AIDS fight SOURCE:Dr. Suzanne T. Illdstad GRAPHICS BY:NEW YORK TIMES PHOTO BY:New York times Dr. Suzanne T. Ildstad is one of the leaders in new uses for baboon-to-human transplants, leading to an ultimate goal of finding ways for the body to accept transplants without rejection drugs

Doctors treating the flood of Rwandan refugees in Zaire are predicting that the refugee camps may be facing what could turn into the biggest epidemic of cholera ever. An estimated one million people are huddled in a small area under dire conditions in the harsh lava-based terrain, where workers cannot easily dig sanitation trenches, say officials of Doctors Without Borders

Sputum examination for rapid diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis is not always satisfactory. We examined peripheral blood with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Blood samples were collected from 8 consecutive patients with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis and from 18 healthy controls, half of whom were tuberculin skin-test positive. All 8 patients had evidence of circulating Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in the lymphocyte fraction of peripheral blood, and positive sputum cultures indicating active pulmonary tuberculosis. None of the healthy controls had positive PCR results. This PCR technique may prove useful for the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis

'There may well be a huge epidemic, but it is not inevitable,' said the expert, Dr. Paul A. Blake. But, he added, 'it would be wise to expect the worst and prepare for it.' Ms. [Bernadette Brusco] said her organization did not differ with those comments. Cholera has been a serious health problem in Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zaire and Zambia recently, Dr. Blake said. 'The organism was in Rwanda and Zaire and waiting for opportunity' to spread further, he said. 'The major reason for being concerned about dead bodies is that people do not like to be surrounded by death,' Dr. Blake said. 'Lots of dead bodies lying around are not as much a health hazard as one person with active cholera who is defecating into a water source.'

In the nearly 20 years since the discovery of Legionnaires' disease and the bacterium that causes it, scientists have come to recognize the importance of water as the microbe's hiding place and source of transmission. Epidemiologists from the CDC are investigating 4 confirmed and 18 suspected cases of the disease among passengers who sailed aboard Celebrity Cruises' Horizon, and preliminary tests have identified the organisms in the ship's water tanks

Scientists are taking that radical idea seriously, basing their hopes for success on the natural resistance of baboons to H.I.V., the AIDS virus, and on advances in immunology. The aim is to transfer the disease resistance to H.I.V.-infected people, bridging the species barrier. Plans are strictly in the experimental phase. If the experiment works, uninfected baboon cells will join the H.I.V.-infected human marrow and help restore the body's immune function. Since 1983, Dr. [Anthony S. Fauci]'s institute has been experimenting with bone-marrow transplants between identical twins to combat H.I.V. About 50 healthy twins have donated marrow to their H.I.V.-infected siblings. Ordinarily, the recipient's marrow would be destroyed before the transplant, but this was not done with the H.I.V.-infected twins because researchers were concerned about further damaging the immune system. Most infected twins also received various anti-H.I.V. therapies. The next round of baboon-to-human transplants is expected to use a discovery by Dr. [Suzanne T. Ildstad], a former member of Dr. [Thomas Starzl]'s team who now works independently at the University of Pittsburgh, about how to avoid graft-versus-host disease. She has discovered a novel cell, one of about 250 cells in the marrow, that she calls a facilitating cell because it helps eliminate the risk of graft-versus-host disease in rodents. It allows the grafting of purified stem cells into genetically different recipients, including hosts of different species. Stem cells are believed to give rise to the wide variety of immune cells and oxygen-carrying red cells in the blood

The CDC said on Jul 7, 1994 that an emergency surveillance program allowed health officials to forgo expensive contingency plans for widespread mosquito control after the Midwest floods in 1993. The surveillance program cost $390,000 but saved an estimated $10 million. The development may have relevance to the 1994 flooding in the South

The finding pointed to [David J. Acer]'s practice. But such tests cannot tell who infected whom, nor how Acer might have transmitted the virus. Such evidence comes from interviews and other features of an epidemiological investigation. Explanations have ranged widely, from Acer's nicking a finger and allowing a little of his blood to flow into a dental wound in a patient's mouth, to murder. But none could be proved. The patients denied having had sex with Acer, and rape was ruled out because none had had general anesthesia. Investigators did not find the sexual partner who presumably infected Acer, who was bisexual. Only one other cluster of cases in a doctor's office has been found. Last December, Australian health officials reported that HIV had been transmitted to four patients who were treated on the same day in 1989 in the office of a surgeon who tested HIV negative. The cluster was attributed to a breakdown in standard infection control that allowed HIV to spread from a fifth, infected patient. CBS quoted Lisa Shoemaker, another infected patient, as saying in 1989 that she believed her boyfriend was infected with HIV. [Harold W. Jaffe] said that the boyfriend had tested negative and that two years later he tested positive for HIV, but with a different strain

Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston believe they have identified the mechanism by which high amounts of an amino acid called homocysteine damages arteries. In the Jul 5, 1994 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists said they had identified two important effects of homocysteine: one is to promote the growth of smooth muscle cells in the arteries and the other is to inhibit the growth of the cells present on the inside lining of arteries, or endothelium